Prince of the Forest
by Blue Lace Agate
Summary: An arrogant prince.. a mysterious sorceress...a terrible curse... When Prince Atem is driven from everything he's ever known, it nearly destroys him. But when a young woman with a dire fate of her own dares to enter his domain, he might find a reason to fight for his own humanity. Fairytale AU
1. Chapter 1

What had begun a fine autumn's day was no longer so. Darkening clouds crowded the once-blue sky above the towers of Domino Castle, and a chill wind stirred the air. Prince Atem stamped his boots, glad at least for the fur-lined cloak clasped about his shoulders, although it did little enough to block out the cold. The magistrate was still droning on, though Atem doubted a single soul was listening. Cut from the same cloth, him and the priest, it seemed. At this rate, it would be the dead of night before they made it to their suppers. Couldn't they just hang the knave and be done with it?

His eyes traveled to the man standing on the wooden platform before the magistrate. A more base-looking scoundrel, he'd never seen. Unnaturally pale hair stuck out at angles, and a jagged network of scars crisscrossed across the side of his face. Despite the priest's sermonizing, the man didn't look the least repentant. Defiance smoldered in his eyes, was written in the almost careless way he held himself. Atem scowled. They'd see just how bold this fellow was when he was dangling from the gallows, wouldn't they?

"Justice is one of our noble kingdom's most fundamental precepts," the magistrate was droning on. "Our great laws and traditions must be upheld. The very foundations of our way of life depend on it." Atem stifled a yawn. At this rate, his hair would be as a grey as the magistrate's before this trial was over.

"But justice must always be tempered with mercy. As the poets have said, 'the quality of mercy is not strained.' In the soul of the one who is truly great and wise, justice and mercy are not rivals, but the dearest of friends. They are not opposed, but find their truest fulfillment in the other."

What was this old fool even saying? You could string fine-sounding words together like pearls on a string, but that didn't make them mean anything.

"The law is clear," the magistrate continued in his plodding tones. "The penalty for poaching in the royal forests is death by hanging."

Finally! Atem wanted to shout. Why had it taken the dotard the better half of an hour to come to the point?

"This sentence is binding, and can only be overturned or amended by a royal pardon."

Silence fell over the assembled crowd. It took Atem a moment to realize that they were looking to him, waiting for a response. Was it possible that anyone here actually thought this criminal deserved a royal pardon? The thief had been caught red-handed, a stag's corpse slung over his shoulder.

The magistrate coughed. "Your highness?"

Atem waved his hand. "Pray continue."

The old man blinked. A startled look crossed his face, but then he managed to recover himself. "Then let justice be done, and the sentence be carried out."

A sudden, biting wind roared from the north, tossing foul black smoke from the torches in his face. Atem's nose wrinkled. The stink of it would be in his cloak for days.

When the smoke cleared, a woman was standing on the wooden platform. She was like no woman that he had ever seen before. Her skin was dusky, and her robes of white and gold spoke of some exotic land far beyond the kingdom's borders. Long, jet-black hair streamed down her shoulders, bound only by a golden coronet that encircled her head. A queen? A goddess? _A gypsy fortuneteller, more like,_ Atem told himself cynically. Yet there was something undeniably authoritative about the way she held her head, and her dark eyes were arresting.

"Yes, let justice be done." Her words were a mocking echo of the magistrate's. A hard, enigmatic smile curved her lips.

"Who are you?" Atem demanded.

The woman waved a slim hand, golden bangles jangling about her wrist. "Does it matter?"

What a ridiculous thing to say. _Of course,_ it mattered. His lip curled. "This is a trial, gypsy, not a circus. Unless you have come to bear witness, depart from here."

Her eyes glittered with amusement. "But I have come to bear witness." Her voice lifted, carrying above the murmurs of the crowd, as she raised a hand to the sky.

"I have come to bear witness, O prince, against cruelty, against corruption, against selfish gain bought with the lives of the innocent." In a single swift motion, she lowered her arm and leveled a finger directly at his chest. "You are the accused." Her eyes flashed dark fire as they met his, and something twisted inside him, a cold horror in his gut unspooling, spreading through his veins.

An involuntary shiver wracked him. Still, he could not look away from her face.

Her face was impassive as a marble statue. "Do you deny the charges?"

Everything within himself screamed _yes_ , but when his mouth opened, the word that came out was, "no." It was a hoarse whisper, forced between his teeth, dragged from somewhere dark and cold.

And it was true.

The world seemed too bright, too cold. Another shiver wrenched through him, and his vision went fuzzy around the edges. A haze of noise rose all around him, but he could no longer see the crowds of peasants, nor make any kind of sense of their sheep-like bleating. A shape that might have been the magistrate stretched towards him, but blindly Atem shoved him away. The effort sent a sudden spasm of pain shuddering through him. What was happening to him? His limbs felt limp as uncooked dough; his head weighed as much as a boulder. He felt himself falling, felt the smooth, unyielding stone of the courtyard beneath his skin, but he was beyond pain now. He was melting, like a taper lit too long. Wax dripped from the guttering flame of his spirit and pooled, shapeless, now soft like jelly, now hardening, slowly, painfully, into a new, contorted form.

The glare of sun on a field of snow seemed to dim. His eyes ached, every part of him, ached, but his vision was coming slowly into focus. The flagstones of the courtyard swam before his eyes, along with the feet of someone Atem thought was the magistrate. Words rang in his eyes, but the words were as formless. They dripped through his mind like water through his fingers. Gasping for breath, Atem tried to get to his feet, but his legs wouldn't work properly. They felt like sticks—too thin, too frail—and it was impossible to maneuver his weight onto them.

"Help me," he tried to call out, but no sound escaped his lips. Panic burbled in his chest. A shadow fell over him and he desperately reached out towards it. To his horror, his arms felt as stick-like as his legs had, and his hands… what had happened to his hands?

A laugh floated over him, and he knew it belonged to the gypsy witch. "This is my judgement, O prince. You have made yourself great while your people know want and despair. You have made yourself blind and deaf to their cries, because you have loved gold and beautiful things rather than mercy and justice. This is the price for your arrogance, for your hard heart so full of greed and so empty of love." Every word she spoke ripped into him like a red-hot iron, but all he could do was gasp for breath, unable to even make a sound. Let your heart be changed from a man's, to a beast's. They will drive you from men, and you will make your home in the wild places. You will be wet with the dew of heaven and eat grass like an ox. Your portion will be with the beasts in the field, until your proud heart is humbled, and you know what it is want when there is nothing to satisfy, to hope when there is nothing but despair, and to love when it profits you nothing."

The words resonated within him like a church bell ringing, ringing, endlessly ringing, far too loud. He wanted to clap his hands over his ears and recoil from the force of it, but it was inside of him and there was no escape, nowhere to hide, and nothing to shield him.

"You have hoarded the deer of your forests like dragon's gold. You have valued them above the blood of your people. No longer, then, will you be their prince. Go to the deer, if you will." Scorn dripped from her words. "Be their prince."

Dimly, beneath the endless tolling of the bells within his head, he could hear horrified screams and shouts coming from the crowd, a new flood of pain washed over him, and above him, a flash of golden light exploded across his vision.

Silence, within and without, for a blessed second, and then…

And then, the world was remade.


	2. Chapter 2

"Witchcraft!" "Treachery!" The cries tumbled over and bled into each other, forming a teeming mass of anger and confusion. "To the prince!" came one shout, and "Seize the witch!" came another. But the witch was gone, as suddenly and mysteriously as she had come, and so, too, it seemed was the prince.

There was no sign of the proud, striking man that had been Prince Atem. There was only a stag, dark, almost red-black in color, with tufts of gold mixed with the white at its breast and panic in its eyes. It reeled and staggered, hooves clattering on the stones of the courtyard, as if it were a just-born fawn with no idea how to use its own legs, through a proud rack of antlers crested its head. A hush fell over the crowd, every soul all at once caught by the same horrible thought, the same terrible doubt.

Could this be the prince?

The magistrate stood closest to the beast, his black robes fluttering in the cold autumn breeze, his gnarled old hands trembling just as much. "Prince Atem?" he said slowly.

A tremor shuddered through the creature. For an instant, it stared into the magistrate's face, as if transfixed by torchlight, and then, suddenly, it was in motion, bolting across the courtyard and into the sea of common folk. A troubled look passed over the magistrate's face, and then it hardened. His round purple eyes narrowed to dark slits. "Witch's familiar!" he cried, shaking a fist above his head. "Is there no hunter that can rid us of this foul sorcerer's creature?"

It was as if a spell had been broken. The frozen silence disintegrated into a frenzy of shouting, shoving, and too many bodies hustling in all directions. A shower of arrows flew from the direction of the guardsmen on the walls, and the stag reared up on its hind legs as one grazed his breast. For an instant, it looked as though he might crash to the ground, but then, in a sudden, swift movement, he bounded away, weaving through the scattered crowds towards the King's Park. No one had the presence of mind to grab the animal—or perhaps they had the self-preservation instinct not to try. The guardsmen loosed a few more arrows, but there were too many people in the way, and they had to abandon the effort.

"Give chase!" one yeoman cried, but another stopped him.

"Nay, friend." His gaze lifted to the edge of the forest, where the stag was already disappearing into the shadow of the trees. "Witch's creature or not, the stag is in the king's forest now, and all deer there cannot be touched save by royal command."

Both men looked towards the poacher still on the hangman's platform. The wind screamed through the trees, underscoring the tense stillness that hung over the crowd. Now that the stag was gone, along with the witch and their prince, no one knew what was to be done next.

It fell to the magistrate to break the silence. "In light of these happenings, this trial cannot continue," he declared. "Let this man be taken to gaol to await royal justice." No one mentioned that with the prince's mysterious disappearance, there was no telling just when royal justice would be forthcoming. Word would have to be sent to the king at his capital in Argent. But Argent was more than five days journey hence, and besides, all knew that the king had not cared much for the affairs of his vast domain in the years since he had taken his new queen to wife.

As the guards went about the magistrate's orders, the priest took his cue and came forward. "Now, perhaps we might all say a prayer for the soul of our prince, God's peace be on him."

The assembled masses dutifully bowed their heads as the priest spoke, but privately, more than one rebellious heart thought they did not care whether the prince's soul went to God or the devil so long as it did not return to trouble them any longer.

* * *

Green shadows closed in around him, cutting him off from the chaos of the castle courtyard, as he tore through the trees. The shouts receded along with the sunlight, but the panic pounding in his chest did not recede so much as a quarter inch. His legs pumped furiously, as if he could somehow run straight out of this freakishly wrong body. Sweat beaded on his heaving flanks. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. Still, he ran, on and on and on, as the forest grew ever darker and stranger.

When at last he could run now more, he stood shuddering and panting in a clearing in the midst of a thicket. The grass under his hooves was cool and green, and without even considering what he was doing, he leaned his neck down and took a mouthful. It was sweet with just a hint of tanginess, moist and luscious. Heavenly. It was only when he swallowed that the realization of what he had done washed over him. Grass. He was eating grass.

His head reeled up and he staggered backwards, appalled and disgusted. The words of the witch echoed back to him. _You will be wet with the dew of heaven and eat grass like an ox._ They seemed to ring mockingly from every shrub and tree.

 _No,_ he told himself. His shape was changed—that could not be denied. But he would not become like a wild beast. He must keep his mind clear. Thinking, that was the key. He had to think.

Slowly, some of the blind panic drained away, just enough to allow him to take stock of himself. He was an animal. He could feel the four spindly legs beneath him, still trembling with the exertion of his mad dash through the forest, could feel sweat dripping down heaving sides, soaking into the hairs that coated them. A heavy, foreign, weight pressed into the crown of his head, and a short tail twitched at the base of his spine. A tail! Even his breathing sounded different –high pitched and horsey.

The taste of grass lingered in his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth—strange teeth, with edges in all the wrong places. He still wanted to eat that grass. It was only his only disgust at the idea that was keeping him from taking another bite. But the grass hadn't been disgusting at all when he was eating it. It had been sweet and good.

He shoved the impulse away again, harder this time, but he knew it wasn't gone for good. Now, was merely appetite, but before long there would be hunger. A phantom pang of it shot through his stomach just at the thought.

He took a step, and then another. Now that he was not hurtling through the trees, he was aware of the strangeness of each movement, the lift of each leg, the fall of each hoof, yet it was not as strange as it should have been. Already, it was beginning to seem normal to walk with four legs and not two. A shudder ran through him. It would happen so quickly. He would lose himself in the animal, just as the witch had said.

No. He still had his mind. He was still himself. Prince Atem. That was his name. He had a name. He had a kingdom. This had been done to him; it could be undone.

Hope sparked at the thought. Yes, of course, it could be undone. There must be someone, some wizard or priest or sorcerer of some sort that could put him back in his right body. Or perhaps that gypsy witch herself could be made to do. People could be made to do most anything under the right circumstances, he thought grimly. No doubt, the palace guards already had her under lock and key in the dungeons. If only he hadn't fled, he would probably be sitting down to a lavish dinner in the Great Hall at this very moment.

Dinner…that was not a good thought. He pulled his muzzle away from a tempting clump of clover.

 _You're going to have to eat eventually,_ his mind told him, rather impatiently.

He rejected the thought. _Eventually_ implied he would be staying in this state…indefinitely. A black coldness seeped through his veins. That way lay madness. He could feel the edge of it already. He could not allow himself to think like that. He could not make allowances for this… transformation… this abomination he had become.

 _Then you'll die,_ his thoughts promptly replied.

He shook his head and felt the weight of swaying antlers. Perhaps death would be a kinder fate. But he was not made to be a martyr. He'd never been much for self-denial.

He bent his head, and he ate.

The taste of the grass was sweet, with a subtle tang, a pleasant flavor, even if the texture was chewy and stringy. He disliked the way his jaw worked as he chewed, how foreign the movement was, yet how naturally his new body performed it.

When he had finished his meal, he was thirsty. Instinctively, his nose sought out the scent of water and found it. His legs took him to a small pool of glassy grey-green water. There, as he dipped toward it, he caught his first full true glimpse of himself.

He was a stag. It was somehow but more and less awful than he had feared all at once. He was not some sort of monster-creature, an unnatural figment of a demented nightmare, both man and beast at once. He was actually a rather noble-looking animal, one he would not have declined to aim his bow at in other circumstances. But he was an animal. There was no denying it now. He'd walked on a beast's legs, eaten with a beast's jaw, and now he stared at himself with a beast's eyes. Just another stag in the royal forest.

 _No._ His earlier resolution echoed back through his mind. _No._ He refused to be just another animal. There was a way. He would find it, or he would forge it himself if he had to. But he was Prince Atem of Argent, and he would not be a stag forever.


	3. Chapter 3

Golden light filtered through a canopy of leaves before settling on the grassy clearing below and the tall, dark-colored stag that stood alone within it. Flecks of dew still clung to the blades of grass, sparkling like diamonds. The stag bent his head to the succulent mouthfuls as birds chirped overhead. A new day. Even as the sunlight melted away the damp chill of the morning, it dispelled any last hope of waking to find himself safe in his bed and this all some monstrous dream.

He didn't feel the panic of yesterday, though, the desperate need to claw out of this strange skin, or somehow run so fast that he ran back into his old shape. Today, the alien-ness of his body was a leaden weight in his stomach… a stomach that was otherwise quite empty and unhappy about it.

Hence, the grass.

Despite his gloomy thoughts, the morning was undeniably lovely. Little by little, the serenity of the place sunk into him. How different it was from the castle, with its bustling servants calling to each other as they carried their trays and loads, the minstrels and hangers-on always underfoot, trying at every moment to be amusing, to gain some scrap of favor, and the councilors and advisors dogging his steps with their constant "hem-hems" and disapproving frowns. His father's men, most of them, and surely writing long letters to the capital over his many failings as a prince. Well, they could all go hang.

Atem felt a stab of malicious pleasure as he considered what they would write next. Would they dare to write the king that his only son had been transformed into an animal by dint of sorcery? Their hands would tremble so badly they would not be able to hold a pen! Or perhaps they would attempt to conceal the truth. What lies and excuses would they weave in an attempt to convince the king that all was well?

The grass tasted sour in his mouth. It mattered little if their excuses were as thin as the gold plating on their chains. Did the king even read their dispatches? Or did he use them merely as tinder for his fires, content to let his heir rot in a backwater province.

He had stopped eating, his body tense and twitching. The animal in him thought some threat was near, but what man was left in him knew it was far away—in Argent, in the royal palace, and five years ago. That was when she had arrived, the Lady Iona with her long dark amber hair, silver voice, and beguiling eyes as green as precious jade from the eastern lands. The Lady could only be a few years older then himself, but that had not mattered to the king, not when she smiled at him as she curtsied low. Bitterness surged in his chest, and he felt his legs pump into motion.

One look into those jade green eyes and his father had lost any thought in his head that did not revolve around the Lady. Her every fleeting desire became his burning passion. Garden parties replaced the great hunts, musicales replaced revels, masquerade balls, meetings with advisors. Overnight, the majestic fortress seemed transformed into a fairy's bower. Flowers dripped from every railing, and jewels from Lady Iona's neck and ears.

No one was surprised when his father made her his queen, though it had only been a handful of weeks. The king had no interest in anything that did not concern her—not the hunts that used to enthrall him, not his armies or borders, not the herds and fields of Argent's farmers, not the distant marches or far-flung countries, and certainly not his son.

Briars ripped into his skin, and he realized he had blindly charged into a thornbush thicket. He tugged himself free. A few thorns stuck in his side. His short tail twitched in an utterly vain effort to dislodge them. He cursed his lack of hands. He cursed the gypsy witch who had done this to him. He cursed the existence of thornbushes and his own pitiful existence, such as it was.

* * *

 _Once, there had been a girl who lived in a tower. The tower had been white stone, washed gold with the sunlight and covered in soft green ivy. From the window of that tower, the girl could see her kingdom—the pond where orange fish swam and the white ducks quacked, the orchards, heavy with blossoms in early spring and sweet fruit in late summer, and the stables where the nickering horses awaited her visits with sugar cubes and kisses._

 _The girl's name was Sweetheart, or at least that was what everyone called her. Some of them said it with bows and curtsies, some with pats on the head, and some with great fierce bear hugs, but all said it with a smile. If there was a cloud in her sunny blue sky, a sorrow and a grief as deep-rooted as the willow tree that grew beside her tower, then, like the willow tree, it had been there so long that she had forgotten what her little kingdom was like without it._

 _But the roots of the willow grew deep, long invisible fingers running underground and pulling at foundations of stone. From the window of the white tower, it was a safe, sunny kingdom that had Sweetheart for its princess. But, though no eye could see it, that tower was about to crumble._

* * *

Atem woke from the dream with a start, whole body quivering. For an instant, he didn't know where he was, or who he was. In the next instant, reality slid back into place with the heavy thud of a coffin lid, and the dream had all but slipped away. He could only recall snatches of it now—a sunlit tower, a little girl… no, there was nothing.

He was losing track of himself. It had been nine days now since he had been transformed into a stag. Nine days…he'd counted them over and over…but somehow the number slipped away from him at times. Sometimes counting itself seemed an altogether strange thing to do.

He was terrified.

In the past nine days, he'd attempted to return to the palace grounds three times…or was it four? Each time, he'd been met by arrows—sometimes from the royal guards, sometimes, like last night, by enterprising peasants. Poachers, he thought, but the word didn't hold the contempt it normally did. Instead, he felt a bristle of fear go down his spine. None of the poachers had so far ventured into the corner of the forest he had carved out for himself, but he knew that as far as any human was concerned, he was a target, whether as the cursed monster-prince or simply as a good meal.

It wasn't arrows that scared him, though… at least not arrows that scared him most. When he'd first been transformed, he couldn't even take stock of everything that had been done to him without being overwhelmed with disgust, fear, shame, and horror. Every minute, it seemed, brought a fresh reminder of the freakish animal body he had been forced into. But now, the things that once disturbed him were starting to seem normal. Every step he took on four legs, on hooves, not feet, should have been strange and clumsy, but somehow, in the past few days, it had become natural. More than natural. He felt… graceful… swift… surefooted. He'd always taken pride in his athleticism—riding hunting, fencing, falconry—but when he'd run from the arrows last night, he'd never felt faster or stronger. If he wasn't careful, he'd find himself enjoying the taste of grass.

 _My name is Prince Atem of Argent,_ he told himself. The words had become his catechism, the opening lines of a litany that stood between him and the loss of his humanity. The prayers he'd been forced to learn as a child, and had mumbled, unbelieving, ever since, he said now. He recited snatches of poetry, lines of plays, verses of ballads, any scraps of words he could hold on to.

He couldn't say them out loud, of course. He had tried. Saints only knew what would have happened if any human ear had heard the ungodly sounds that had come past too-long, too-thick deer's tongue and strange, knobbly deer's teeth. No doubt, they would have assumed he was not only an accursed animal, but a demon too.

Atem had heard stories of sailors marooned on desert islands, rescued years later, who had lost all human speech. What if that was to happen to him? What if by the time he found a way to regain his man's body, all he had left was the mind of an animal?

 _My name is Prince Atem of Argent…_

Words! Words would not help him now. He could mumble and natter in his mind until it crumbled away, but all that would do was prolong this purgatory. It was time for action.


End file.
